So, having done several weeks of work in a couple of breweries, I decided that, with the onset of cold wet icy days, I'd had enough of being a dogsbody either being frozen stiff and dripping wet or just doing repetitive tasks till my muscles ache with tedium.

Still, one of them has invited me in to do a day's proper brewing, which is what I wanted. So I'll go in for that next week.

So today has been spent just recovering from work knowing that no more is in sight for a bit.

It is actually quite worrying in that I'm starting out on a physically difficult career at the wrong end of my working life. I'm carrying all sorts of aches pains, injuries etc which restrict my strength and mobility so that, even if I can do much of the job, I end the day absolutely exhausted and without the youth that allows me to bounce back readily.

Still, a lack of jobs in something normal is making me do desperate things

I already take glucosamine and chondritin, fish oil for joints. But nothing is going to stop my left knee deteriorating, the cartilage is going and when I bend down I can feel bone against bone inside the joint.

I don't think it's just the knee cap, my leg angles sideways at the knee. If I put my knees together, my feet will be 20 cm apart. So the cartilage on the outside of the knee joint takes all the strain and has been worn away.

It's hard to gauge the long-term effects of being exposed to these harsh occupations. Looking at NFL players provides another way to get at long term effects. In fact I used the very short average career--3-5 years--of NFL players as a way to estimate Batman's longevity in Becoming Batman.

Skilled writer Peter King provided an in-depth expose on football players in the Dec 12, 2011 issue of Sports Illustrated. This piece was a follow up look at 39 members of the 1986 Cincinnati Bengals--25 years later--and spanned all forms of injury. But it's the bodily injuries I want to focus on.

In the category of "residual injury" over 70% had at least one surgery during their careers with ~40% having a post-NFL surgery for an injury related to football. Thirty percent had an upcoming surgery. More than 90% of the players said that they had lingering issues arising from an injury derived from their NFL careers.

Probably the most telling "statistic" is that on average these players reported 3 parts of the body that experienced pain each day. That's a lot of injuries and a lot of discomfort.

i used to massage the siena basketball team, back in the 80's and they would tell me the price on their bodies of the sport.

larry bird, one of the greatest players ever, retired in his early thirties because as he put it: "when the permanent pain in my back met up with the permanent pain in my legs, i knew it was time to quit"

i knew it was my time to quit when they asked me to give pain-killing shots during the games.

there were a couple of NBA players, (longer than my table!) in their twenties who were paid $150,000 a month to sacrifice their present and future well-being in this way.

so many people with screwed up knees, i know the answer before they reply when i ask them if they were heavy into college football.

for a few hours, days or years of juvenile exaltation, decades of reduced mobility and pain. it's nuts.

i remember reading somewhere that ski-jumping and high diving had adverse effects on the brain, easy to believe...

Basketball and tennis are terrible for the knees. All that stop and go.

Football is a contact sport, so that is hardly comparable to physical labour.

If you look at the people who live the longest, including the people of Okinawa, you will find that it is not only their diet that prolongs their life, but the fact that they do physical labour. One documentary I watched about it showed people in their 90's harvesting with the others up in trees.

Positive;-
Rediscovering the dignity of work. it's been a long time since I felt I was making a positive contribution to a shared endeavor. So, even if it was a shitty job, I enjoyed that I was doing something which was valued.

I got to see up close what went on in a brewery and realise that, not only did you have to want to do that job to work in such an environment, but that I did feel it was something that I wanted to do. Something that I felt I should have been doing right from the beginning.

Yea, of course there are reservations and regrets and a certain realism about what I am likely to actually achieve, but I remain positive about this choice

It's been my experience that the experts in physical rehab sometimes have better practical solutions to these sorts of challenges than do the MDs who are generally more focused on their operations, pharmaceuticals, etc, the area of their expertise.

They did wonders for me. I just kept repeating what they told me to my primary care doctor to get more time authorized by Medicare. Spinal decompression therapy -> hydro therapy -> core strengthening exercises. Three one hour sessions/week for the first and second and then two and finally one hour per week for the exercises, which I repeated two to five times per week at home. We really do have a gem of a physical therapy department at our hospital.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

The main problem on my little Honda is that the underside of the car is covered by an aerodynamic shield, which has to be removed before you can even see the oil filter. And it has about 10 cm of ground clearance, so you have to jack it up before you can even see the shield.

Then all it takes is the correct special filter cartridge tool and very skinny arms, and 45 minutes later, you're done.

Those responsible for the design of the engine compartment should be required to spend one day a month, at full pay, doing routine maintenance on randomly selected vehicles for which they had design responsibility. Then serviceability would drastically improve.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Hint: The factory builds cars to sell as new, which means that optimizing assembly at the factory is their goal. They couldn't care less about what the dealerships and maintenance people have to put up with. When was the last time you saw the cost of an oil change listed as a reason to buy or not buy a particular model?

I give you the Ford Windstar (?) van. My brother, who has a chassis and alignment business in Tuscon, had one in the 80s - and he had a lift. It was necessary either to pull the engine or drill access holes in an inner fender wall in order to change the spark plugs! That sort of problem will certainly tank the resale price if word gets out.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

I've never heard of anything but trouble with four- and six-cyllinder Fords of that era, and Windstars were always said to be the worst of the worst. But minivans were always a Chrysler thing. Ford was really good at building V8s back then, and Crown Vics and Mustangs always seemed to hold up fairly well.

My mother had a 70 or 71 Ford Maverick that was not too bad a car. It lasted until the early '80s and only died because an 80 year old woman had a stroke coming down the hill on Los Feliz Blvd. and rear ended her at about 40 to 50 mph as she was stopped in traffic at the Riverside Drive light in evening traffic. She recovered from the accident and there was no gas tank fire, thankfully. And that car was maintainable, even by me, for lots of things. It had an inline 6 and got about 18 mpg under good circumstances, which was not too bad for the time.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

I owned a '69 Maverick once, and later a '67 Chevy Impala. Both were good cars. Even though both were red and acted as absolute cop magnets. I suppose it may have had something to due with my pedal to the metal approach back then too.

No, Kirsty McColl did not write the song. Shane McGowan and another Pogue (Jem Finer I think) spent two years worrying over it until it was finished. By then, bass player Cait O'Riordan who was to sing the female role, had left the band (eloped with Elvis Costello who had produced the classic "Rum, sodomy and the lash"). McColl got the gig because she was the wife of their current producer, Steve Lillywhite. ("First Lord Nerlson's sunken ships, now Steve Lillywhite's drunken mix") She was a major artist in her own right, and it's rather ironic that she's best known for this song rather than her own work.
I saw her do the song with the band in Lyon many years ago.

But yeah that's a kick-arse version and I gravely thank you for posting it.

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II

Monti has declared this evening he will resign his office as soon as the budget legislation is passed. That should be by the end of the year. He arrived at his decision after Angelino Alfano withdrew his party's support of the government coalition. Alfano acted at the behest of his owner, Silvio Berlusconi, who has announced that Italy must once again be saved.

History is but an interminable sequence of farce, imposture, insolence and stupidity that occasionally turns to tragedy.

You took the worry right out of my mind. As of now Berlusconi will adopt a burn and destroy tactic to see how many legions he has. There's going to be a lot of defections of which many will be mercenary. They're just putting a price on their support.

Whatever, as is, Berlusconi does not have the numbers in parliament to block the annual budget law or stability pact. What he can do is delay it with procedural tactics until the last minute. At present there is a majority without him. It's just a matter of realpolitik: it's no use to waste time to seek a new majority at the end of the legislature. Monti still has the numbers unless Berlusconi buys up some Senators (It will be very difficult to do so in the House of Deputies.)

What is important for him is to kill all the reforms that would have seriously disadvantaged him in the next elections, such as the bill to prohibit individuals condemned of crimes to be appointed to either house. And of course I use the word "appointed" to once again make it plain that, with the actual electoral laws, MPs are not chosen by the electorate but by party bosses based on factors that have nothing to do with the ethics of politics. And of course we will be called to "vote" with his electoral law, the Porcellum. If there ever were grounds to argue that democracy is not synonymous with elections- and I can assure you that there are- the actual Italian electoral law is one.

It will further be important to count his legions within the RAI to see just how much clout he has in the state strategic media beyond his monopoly of the private strategic media.

His optimum goal is to see the elections held in mid-March as I suppose his strategists feel he will have a good possibility of having a majority or a stalemate in "elections" held at that time. Monti instead wants the elections as early as possible for the same reason: to anticipate and compromise Berlusconi's electoral roadmap.

We are going to see a ruthless, hateful campaign drenched in victimism.

There is speculation that Monti may get into the electoral fray as he is irate.

Vendola has accepted to ally his party with Casini's center party to create a large center-left coalition.

It is likely Berlusconi will favour the electoral impact of Grillo's movement so that he can easily buy their MPs up after the election, when necessary, just as he did with Di Pietro in two successive legislatures.

I feel that one of the most important acts that President Napolitano can do is to appoint Berlusconi Senator-for-life. I have said this before and I repeat it. It would throw a wrench into elections. After all, considering the important contribution organized crime has made to the Italian republic since its birth, it is only fitting that they should be represented with this distinction.

Vendola has accepted to ally his party with Casini's center party to create a large center-left coalition.

It is likely Berlusconi will favour the electoral impact of Grillo's movement so that he can easily buy their MPs up after the election, when necessary, just as he did with Di Pietro in two successive legislatures.

ah, i had wondered about di pietro's party, why he had attracted such pitiful company, yeah 'party of values', right.

such a disappointment, he deserved better, imo.

what do vendola and casini have in common, other than they're not grillo or berlusconi?

here we go again... going to be a fun scramble till march.

berlusconi was on tv clutching marroni's book to his chest for the cameras. nice try...

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century By George Friedman
2009 | 274 Pages | ISBN: 0307475921 | EPUB | 4 MB

"Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world." --George Friedman

In his long-awaited and provocative new book, George Friedman turns his eye on the future--offering a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.
The Next 100 Years draws on a fascinating exploration of history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years. Friedman shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new era--with changes in store, including:

The U.S.-Jihadist war will conclude--replaced by a second full-blown cold war with Russia.
China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power.
A new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the United States and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Far East; but armies will be much smaller and wars will be less deadly.
Technology will focus on space--both for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.
The United States will experience a Golden Age in the second half of the century.

Written with the keen insight and thoughtful analysis that has made George Friedman a renowned expert in geopolitics and forecasting, The Next 100 Years presents a fascinating picture of what lies ahead.

George Friedman (born 1949 in Budapest, Hungary) is an American political scientist and author. He is the founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the private intelligence corporation Stratfor.

Hmm, I believe there are some science fiction books I could recommend as being equally useful.

It's not that I don't think the writer isn't qualified to talk about issues 10 or 20 years out. But imagine writing in 1912 about the challenges of the 20th century. Within 2 years you'd have been dead wrong about everything and the mistakes would have multiplied from there

The German aerial forces, and consisting of airships and Drachenflieger, attempt to seize control of the air before the Americans build a large-scale aerial navy. The Germans are unaware that the Chinese and Japanese have also been building a massive air force. Tensions between Japan and the United States, exacerbated by the issue of American citizenship being denied to Japanese immigrants, also lead to war. The "Confederation of Eastern Asia" (China and Japan) turns out to possess aerial forces, and their aircraft and tactics have been seen as a portent to the kamikaze of World War II. The United States therefore has to fight on two fronts: the Eastern and the Western, in the air as well on sea.

Bert Smallways is present as the Germans first attack an American naval fleet in the Atlantic, then bomb New York City into submission

Don't get me wrong, there are things that Wells imagination nails, like the problems of bombing a city into submission (gerilla soon starts to fire upon the German troops leading to punishment bombing) or how aircrafts would dominate sea battles.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP!
A vote for EPP is a vote for PES!
Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

"UK's Observer adds "kill Jews" to Hamas leader Khaled Meshal's Gaza speech when he did not say it"
Yesterday, I posted a passage about "killing" from the speech that Khalid Mish`al gave in Gaza. It was from the Observer (the sister paper of the Guardian) in the UK. Comrade Electronic Ali read the passage in question and was not convinced because he heard the speech on TV. We looked for the original Arabic text of the speech and comrade Electronic Ali was correct. He wrote this story on the matter.

If this is the wave of the future, it makes nonsense of just about all the conventional wisdom on reducing inequality. Better education won't do much to reduce inequality if the big rewards simply go to those with the most assets. Creating an "opportunity society", or whatever it is the likes of Paul Ryan etc. are selling this week, won't do much if the most important asset you can have in life is, well, lots of assets inherited from your parents. And so on.

I think our eyes have been averted from the capital/labor dimension of inequality, for several reasons. It didn't seem crucial back in the 1990s, and not enough people (me included!) have looked up to notice that things have changed. It has echoes of old-fashioned Marxism -- which shouldn't be a reason to ignore facts, but too often is. And it has really uncomfortable implications.